I am sure more happened than this

Wow. I am really horrible at consistently updating my friends and family about life. Things change really quickly around here and it feels like time flies by....really. I can't believe where I am now and where I started!

I shouldn't write about everything in detail since that would make for an extremely long entry. For purposes of updating those I don't get a chance to speak with, here are some bullet points.

• In addition to doing logistics, I am covering the nutrition program while the manager is away. It is a very satisfying experience and makes me think I should look into how I could become more qualified to do relief work. Maybe that is a strange sentence but I think getting some sort of credential to do work here, even a certificate, could be helpful. 
• At the nutrition center, one of the community volunteers refuses to speak English so I have been learning Arabic. I learn really quickly when I HAVE to speak to her in Arabic. It's still coming along slowly but I can out together some very basic sentences and understand her better than when I began. Things like this make me absolutely love the work I do.
• I've been holding tons of babies! It makes me SO so happy when a mother hands me a fat baby because it means we are giving them food they need to make those babies HEALTHY. Skinny babies make me sad. 
• I'm not sure if I wrote about this but one of our driver's accidentally ran over a pig. Where I am, you have to pay for a pig when you run it over but then you get to keep the pig. I went to the neighbor's house to butcher it and was so satisfied to watch that pig's head get chopped off. I think the pig's around here are super annoying and we even had to slam on our brakes yesterday to avoid one in the middle of the road.
• We baked a cake last week in our oven. It doesn't look like an oven by western standards and you still have to put coals in it, but it made a very delicious cake. This sounds like a stupid bullet point, I know, but I haven't made a cake yet over here and baking it over coals was cool. I would never do that back home!
• There was recently come conflict in a nearby camp between the refugees and the host community. Some men got seriously injured and were brought to our hospital. We don't have a blood bank at our hospital but one of the men needed blood. Me and my co worker are O negative, so we donated to this man. It was great being able to give something since I don't have medical knowledge and couldn't help in that way. The man ended up dying early the next morning which was a very serious reminder of how fragile the relationship is between the locals and the refugees in this area. It reminded me that different things are important to different people and everyone will defend what they feel is most important. Even to death. 
• I found out an old friend was found dead back home. I haven't spoken to this person in awhile but we had been close at one time in my life. It was very strange finding out he was dead because it didn't seem real, it didn't seem like something that was possible. I am still trying to grasp the reality of death...I realize it is part of life but it's strange to really come to terms with someone being gone. I can't ever talk to that person again. 

Those are the main things that have been going on. A lot of death lately. I have recently been very exhausted and can't WAIT to go on R & R. If anyone finds themselves in Italy or Brussels...let me know!

Sheikh lessons

I turned 27 a week ago. My birthday was so great and I think right after that life took a bad turn.

It all started when the day before my birthday I noticed myself getting really tired for no reason. Always a bad sign but sometimes I can just rest and not get sick. I wasn't really sick on my birthday but the beginnings of sickness were present. After my birthday, I couldn't stop it...full blown cold/flu/virus. I know it could have been so so so much worse considering what kind of diseases can be caught where I am but...it was not enjoyable.

In the midst of me being sick, one of the most important relationships in my life took a horrible turn. The thing I think I ruined, I most definitely ruined now. I can't tell if I'm the one being unreasonable or if I am demanding what I deserve. I am so bad at judging such things.

In work news, I have begun learning the nutrition program. It's very interesting stuff. Lots of acronyms and procedures to learn but it gives me an opportunity to be in the community doing something and I love that. We have a distribution coming up and I will get to learn how it all works. It's all a bit strange to explain and I don't understand it all yet but basically, nutrition is the program we use to help feed children and pregnant and lactating women. We screen for malnourished children and do our best to help them. That is the simplest way I can put it.

Since I mentioned being in the community, some people on my compound have been going out on the quads on Sundays. We go to this nearby village on the river...the name of it I can't quite remember. On the way there is this amazing tree whose roots grow DOWN from the branches. I need to take a photo and post it here even though every photo takes so so long to upload. It's a really amazing tree. We have been there twice and each time a crowd forms to see why we stopped there and asks, "Do you have trees like this where you're from?" The answer is no, we don't. I think they are glad to show us something we don't know about. There is always a crowd of children and some of them are scared of white people. I'm not quite sure where the fear comes from but I know we look different. It's pretty funny to just step towards them and have them run away but it is also a little sad. Sometimes I just want to say hello to a baby and the kid holding it will not let me get near! I don't think I'm THAT scary.

I've been reading "They Poured Fire on us from the Sky" and it is really sad. They were not treated well when they went to refugee camps and it makes me wonder how the people here are really treated. I don't get out in the camps much and I was reminded of that when I went to a Sheikh meeting before our latest food distribution. We always meet with the sheikh's before a food distribution since they organize their tribes to make the distribution smoother. Sheikh's are like community leaders, they help solve their tribes issues and are great at organizing their people and giving them information. They can also bring up questions and issues so we can work together and help them. They have been having an issue with getting everyone registered so they can get a ration card and they are complaining that because of this, people are having to share their food with others and it is not enough. Ration cards are given to refugees who are registered and the family size is recorded on the card. Some people haven't had ration cards in months meaning that families are stretching their food quit thin because it is being shared among more people than it was meant for. They wanted help in solving the issue of not everyone having a ration card. The answer someone gave was, in summary: "I have been a refugee and I know it is hard but if your neighbor comes to you and asks for food, do you give it to him thinking he will return it? No, you give it to him freely as a gift. We should all help each other and not try to get more. Some things only God can pay." This answer made me angry because it didn't answer the question at all! So one of my co-workers gave the guy a normal answer saying he should speak with the correct agency about registering and getting ration cards. Later, this same man asked another question and said, in summary: "How can you know what the real situation is when you are in your office? I am in the camp, I know what my people need, you don't know." This really hit me because I barely spend any time in the camps and I sincerely don't know what they need. I still believe it's good that we give them food but I think it's horrible the politics game that goes on behind the scenes. I don't think what we do is any sort of long term solution but I am not going to pretend I know what a long term solution would be. I wonder if there is a better way to do relief work. I think there has to be.